Hanging various ornamental materials to a fixed element is well known. For instance, Christmas trees are commonly decorated with ornaments used to celebrate during the holiday season, and wreaths are commonly used for most any occasions from funerals to holidays. Decorations are personal, trees and wreaths become a representation of the decorator and his/her family. Decorations range from handmade ornaments made by the children to ornaments collected over time. Ornaments take many different forms, from a simple round ball to highly artistic designs. Ornaments are almost always reused year after year, rather than purchased annually, and family collections often contain a combination of commercially produced ornaments and decorations created by family members. Such collections are often passed on and augmented from generation to generation. Ornaments are more than just decorative pieces, they often have symbolic meaning. For instance, a wreath is a symbol of the never ending eternal value of love, a fir tree shows everlasting light and life, and a bow tied together shows bonds of goodwill. Some trees are decorated with a color theme in mind, mainly red to symbolize sacrifice for all. One of the best ways to give a tree or a wreath a traditional appearance is to tie beautiful bows on it.
Bow making has long been recognized as an art, and substantial skill is generally required to manually tie well proportioned decorative bows. Automation of the bow making industry has given rise to complex machinery for producing decorative bows, but such machinery is expensive and takes originality, creativity, and enjoyment out of the personal bow making process. Attempts have been made to devise bow making devices that are inexpensive, but they too tend to limit the bow maker's creativity by dictating the resulting bow configuration. Examples of such devices are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,515,837; 2,077,370; 2,542,222; 2,666,249; 2,763,080; 3,223,440; 3,428,227; 3,501,070; 4,454,968; 4,629,100; 3,632,464; 5,422,288; 5,617,979; 5,810,214; 6,618,913; 6,681,965; 3,377,674; 3,854,179; 4,337,578; 5,100,706; and 5,215,791.
Unfortunately, the beautiful pre-made bows often come with a hefty price and restrict originality and creativity. Thus for cost effective reasons, beautiful and traditional bows constructed of ribbon are tied by hand. Ribbon is a thin band of material, typically cloth but also plastic or sometimes metal, used primarily as decorative binding and tying. Ribbon is used for innumerable useful, ornamental, and symbolic purposes. Two considerations to remember when making a bow is where will the bow be used and of what material will it be constructed of. Satin ribbon is inexpensive, very easy to handle, and excellent to learn with. While perhaps more attractive, velvet ribbon can be difficult for a first time bow tying experience. Wired ribbon is often the preferred ribbon product. It has a thin line of wire on either side of the ribbon and tends to be much easier to shape into a perfectly made bow which will retain its shape much better after all the twisting and folding is done.
Bows are a sought after accent to wreaths and Christmas trees and many other home decor applications. A simplistic approach to making a bow includes starting with a large loop made by pinching the ribbon and leaving the tail as long as desired, then forming additional loops continuously until the bow reaches the desired fullness while leaving enough ribbon to make the second tail, and finally securing the bow with craft wire. However, hand-made bow making craft is not as simplistic as might be thought or desired. Crafters often become frustrated with the technique despite its simplicity. When making a bow with multiple loops the crafter must maintain a pinch grip on each of the loop ends. Every time a new loop is to be formed the pinch grip is relaxed for a split second and the new loop end is then pressed together with those already formed. Unfortunately, letting go of the pinch grip for even a split second sometimes causes the already formed loops to fall apart, making the experience very frustrating. Also, in continually pinch gripping and letting go the tautness in the loops is compromised and the bows may lose some of their fullness. It is thus desirable to provide a device for quickly making a ribbon bow while alleviating the drawbacks normally associated with bowing making by hand.
If one is taking the time to buy or make and collect beautiful holiday ornaments for display, it is also important to hang them to their best advantage. There are numerous hangers and hooks to choose from. So considerations in selecting a product includes: functionality, decorative affect, ease of use, time required for application, and cost. However, perhaps the most important consideration is that the item or items can be held securely. Christmas tree ornaments are typically provided with an opening into which a string, ribbon, or metal hanger is used in hanging the ornament in place. The string or ribbon would be tied to a branch of the Christmas tree, while the metal hanger is merely hung from a branch. Strings and ribbons may be colorful thus adding to the decor to the Christmas tree, but are time consuming to apply when affixing the ornament to a branch. Also, they must then later be untied when removing ornaments from the tree after the holidays. Metal hangers usually include a large top hanging hook that can be bent around the tree branch, while the bottom loop is attached to the ornament. Metal hangers are easier to attach to a branch, but tend to become easily uncoupled from an ornament or unhooked from the branch if the ornament suspended from the hanger is inadvertently bumped. In addition, metal hangers are very visible and often of a dull gray color so that they do little to improve the aesthetic appearance of the ornamentation on a tree. It is thus desirable to have a cost-effective colorful decorative hanger with sufficient tensile strength to prevent the occurrences noted above.
Conventional ornaments vary as widely as one's imagination, but typically the vast majority are to be suspended from a tree branch. While the style of ornament may vary, the weight of the ornament must be such that it will not place undue strain upon the tree branch. For this reason ornaments are typically made of extremely lightweight materials, which translates into fragility. For instance, while a glass ornament provides a very festive and shiny decorative appearance, a normal piece of glass weighs so much that if placed on the end of branch it could cause it to snap. Or should the branch merely sag excessively, the ornament may well slide off the branch, drop to the floor, and break. For this reason such glass ornaments are often made from a wafer thin wall that leaves them light but fragile. The limiting factor is the strength of a Christmas tree branch and how much weight it can support.
It would be desirable to employ a holding device that easily attaches to one or more supporting elements, such as one or more branches, so as to be unobtrusive yet remains affixed to the supporting element even when itself supports one or more ornaments of varying weights or cluster. The holding device could further function as a device with which a decorative ribbon could be quickly made and then retained.